US Working Group gives wrong advice on Egypt

The Working Group on Egypt (WGE), a nonpartisan US-based group of scholars and experts on Egypt co-chaired by Michele Dunne of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution, has issued a letter to President Barack Obama warning him against pursuing policies toward Egypt that will “exacerbate persistent instability” in that country.

The letter described what the group saw as frightening repression and concluded that such instability would make it impossible for Egypt to be a reliable security ally for the United States or peace partner for Israel (never mind that Israelis themselves think differently, but what do they know about their own security?). The letter demanded that the president instruct Secretary of State John Kerry not to certify that Egypt has met congressionally mandated conditions on democracy, and to keep aid programs to Egypt suspended as the best way to serve American interests.